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Some Canadian companies have designed and developed critical communication and sensor gear for modern warships, Pugliese noted. This gear was developed with taxpayer assistance and has proven successful in service with allied fleets, but was not chosen for the new Canadian ships. And this is, the companies believe, a problem. Why aren’t Canadian ships using Canadian-made gear?
It’s a good question, until you think about it for a moment. Then you realize that the better question is this: will the Canadian ships be properly equipped?
That’s it. That’s all that matters.
Will the new ships be capable of doing the things we need them to do? If yes, then who cares where we got the gear? And if no, well, again — then who cares where we got the gear? The important thing isn’t where the comm equipment and sensors were designed and built. It’s that the systems work when our ships are heading into harm’s way. Assuming we have many viable options to choose from, then there are plenty of good ways of making the choice — cost, proven reliability, familiarity to Canadian crews, and, sure, even whether it was made in Canada.
But supporting the local industry needs to be the last thing on the list. This stuff is essential. The lives of our sailors may depend on it working when needed. Cost matters, too, of course, because if the gear is too pricey, we won’t have enough of it, but effectiveness and reliability are first.
Treating military procurement as just another federal jobs-creation program is engrained in our national thinking
But we talk about them last. Because we value it least. There probably is some value in preserving our ability to produce some essential military equipment here in Canada. The scramble earlier this year to equip our frontline medical workers with personal protective equipment is instructive. In a war, whether against a virus or a human enemy, you can’t count on just buying your N-95 masks, or your torpedoes and missiles, from your normal suppliers. Unless Canada somehow gets itself into a shooting war without any of our allies in our corner, any time we are suddenly scrambling to arm up, our much larger allies are probably also scrambling to arm up, and they’ll simply outbid us. (See again our current efforts to procure vaccines for an example of this unfolding in real time.)
